Decommodification and Egalitarian Political Economy

John Vail
Additional contact information
John Vail: Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, J.J.Vail@ncl.ac.uk

Politics & Society, 2010, vol. 38, issue 3, 310-346

Abstract: This article contends that decommodification is an appropriate concept for understanding diverse initiatives such as fair trade, microfinance, open source, social enterprises, and the environmental commons as component features of a common process. Decommodification is conceived as any political, social, or cultural process that reduces the scope and influence of the market in everyday life. Given recent transformations in market societies, a more expansive framework for decommodification is urgently required. Decommodification would insulate non-market spheres from market encroachments; increase the provision of public goods and expand social protection; promote democratic control over the market by creating economic circuits grounded in a logic predicated on social needs rather than profit; and undermine market hegemony by revealing the market’s true social costs and consequences. By ensuring basic needs, enhancing individual capacities and capabilities, and promoting social cooperation and collaboration, decommodification constitutes a central feature of an egalitarian agenda.

Keywords: decommodification; commodification; fair trade; commons; social movements (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0032329210373069 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:polsoc:v:38:y:2010:i:3:p:310-346

DOI: 10.1177/0032329210373069

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Politics & Society
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().